Syracuse, N.Y. — The conversation, conducted in some airport eatery out there on the NBA road during a different life, wafts with more than a little resonance even now.

There sat Gene Shue, the head coach of the then-San Diego Clippers, his hand wrapped around a beer while waiting for his flight, pondering the question before him: Why had he peppered his roster with so many rogues, so many eccentrics, so many ne'er-do-wells?

Former Syracuse center Macky MacPherson was cut by the Buffalo Bills on Monday.Joed Viera

With the likes of Marvin Barnes and Sidney Wicks and Joe Bryant and World B. Free and Nick Weatherspoon and Brian Taylor and Bingo Smith and Bill Walton — each lugging some kind of baggage (forever, or at the time) — among his charges, it amounted to a pretty good subject of discussion.

And then Shue spoke the words that has become in my mind a kind of mantra for coaches everywhere.

"Buddy boy," he said, "I'd play Charles Manson at guard if I thought he could help me win."

It's all about talent, perceived or real. The greatest failing of a professional athlete — no, wait, and of the premier college player, too — isn't poor behavior. It's poor performance. A brush with the law can almost always get hurdled; an erosion of talent (or not enough of it in the first place) is a far more daunting. And damning.

Harry Caray — hardly a coach, but a fella who thought like one — used to call them "milkshake drinkers." As in, you can have 'em. Harry, like so many of those in charge, preferred a different kind of guy in his clubhouse.

Which brings us to the cases of Jerome Smith and Macky MacPherson … and that of Richie Incognito.

Both, of course, took sterling reputations, solid citizenship and unquestioned work ethics with them onto the street. You will, in fact, stumble upon a two-headed goat before you'll engage somebody with a discouraging word about Jerome Smith or Macky MacPherson, who seem bound now for the real world.

Meanwhile, Incognito, notorious for being a bully and a groper, a drinker and a brawler, a lout who'll take a baseball bat to his own Ferrari, may be getting another chance in the NFL with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, whose need on the offensive line is greater than their allegiance to whatever moral code guides that franchise.

But then, this is dog-bites-man.

Smith? MacPherson? Fine young men who are good, but not good enough … and now they've been axed because the Falcons and Bills, respectively, have determined that neither can help them win.

Incognito? An embarrassment, but one with skill … and now he's being romanced because the Bucs believe he might be able to help them beat clubs on the other side.

This is no revelation, sure. Going back nearly 90 years, the Yankees allowed Babe Ruth certain excesses never granted to, oh, Hank Shanks or Johnny Grabowski for reasons as obvious as the Babe's bloodshot eyes.

It is, though, a reminder. Gene Shue wasn't the first, and he'll hardly be the last, to tell his athletes that it wouldn't hurt their chances at all if they checked their milkshakes at the door.

(Bud Poliquin's columns/commentaries and other contributions can be found a couple of times a day, usually, Monday through Friday, usually, on syracuse.com. His work also regularly appears on the pages of The Post-Standard newspaper. Additionally, Poliquin can be heard weekday mornings between 10-12 on the "Bud & the Manchild" sports-talk radio show on The Score-1260.)